Alan Silvestri “Forrest Gump” the Country Music Genre

Bill Laurance and Alan Silvestri Bill Laurance is a British composer and producer who has been a professional musician since the age of fourteen. He is best known for being a founding member of the Grammy-winning jazz fusion group Snarky Puppy. Bill is currently touring and recording as a solo pianist. He is also working with David Crosby of Crosby, Stills, and Nash on Crosby’s forthcoming album. Through his production company, named Twenty Thousand, he has produced music for corporations such as Apple, Nokia, and Hewlett-Packard.

His genre-crossing style adds a fresh new take, blending jazz tones with classical and electronic music, bringing an appreciation for jazz music to a younger generation of listeners. Laurance’s style incorporates brief spats of atonality coupled with varied rhythms to create a unique yet pleasing musical experience.

Alan Silvestri has been a composer of film scores for over thirty years. He developed a love for music in his younger years and began playing drums. His repertoire quickly grew to include bassoon, clarinet, saxophone, and guitar. Silvestri majored in composition at the Berklee College of Music and moved to Hollywood shortly after. His big break came working with director Robert Zemeckis on the “Back to the Future” trilogy. He has since composed music for over 100 movies and television shows. Other notable scores Silvestri has composed include music for the films “Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)”, “Forrest Gump (1994)”, “The Polar Express (2004)”, “The Avengers (2012)”, “Lilo & Stitch (2002)”, and many more. Silvestri’s style and theme are fluid due to the fact that the films he scores encompass many different genres. Laurance’s music consisted mostly of Jazz, with one of his famous songs called “Swag Times.”

This piece is played in major chords throughout with a consistency of a four/four-time signature. Many instruments were involved, such as the trumpet, bass, saxophone, and clarinet. Overall the song “Swag Times” is homophonic as the “instruments play the same line of melody in the same rhythm; however, one instrument plays one note and a second instrument places a note in harmony” (“Homophonic” 1). At the beginning of the piece, it starts off as monophonic as it begins without the accompanying harmony or chords. Another famous song Laurance has composed is called “Ready Wednesday.” This piece is also played in major chords throughout the song and only involves one instrument, the piano. Silvestri is famous for writing songs used in movies such as “Forrest Gump” and “Back to the future.”

“Forrest Gump” is in the country music genre, as the piece creates a calm and gentle mood for the audience. This song is set in major chords as it “reflects the sweet fairy-tale-like story and encourages the audience to feel a certain way about the film” (“Analysis of the music featured in Forrest Gump”). The other famous piece Silvestri wrote is called “Back to the future,” which drastically differs in terms of the mood of the song compared to “Forrest Gump.” In this piece, Silvestri expresses the intensity of sound through the use of accents, staccatos, fortes, mezzo fortes, and crescendos. Throughout the piece, he creates an exciting mood from the effects of the full orchestra and secondary instruments.

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